Checker shadow illusion

1

The checker shadow illusion is an optical illusion published by Edward H. Adelson, professor of vision science at MIT, in 1995.

Description

The image depicts a checkerboard with light and dark squares, partly shadowed by another object. The optical illusion is that the area labeled A appears to be a darker color than the area labeled B. However, within the context of the two-dimensional image, they are of identical brightness, i.e., they would be printed with identical mixtures of ink, or displayed on a screen with pixels of identical color.

Related illusions

While being one of the most well-known contrast illusions, there are similar effects which cause two regions of identical color to appear differently depending on context:

This article is derived from Wikipedia and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. View the original article.

Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
Bliptext is not affiliated with or endorsed by Wikipedia or the Wikimedia Foundation.

Edit article